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Updated: May 3, 2026

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals
Published on: August 15, 2018
Magnetoelastic excitations in the pyrochlore spin liquid Tb2Ti2O7
T Fennell1, M Kenzelmann2, B Roessli1
1Laboratory for Neutron Scattering, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
Abstract:
At low temperatures, Tb2Ti2O7 enters a spin liquid state, despite expectations of magnetic order and/or a structural distortion. Using neutron scattering, we have discovered that in this spin liquid state an excited crystal field level is coupled to a transverse acoustic phonon, forming a hybrid excitation. Magnetic and phononlike branches with identical dispersion relations can be identified, and the hybridization vanishes in the paramagnetic state. We suggest that Tb2Ti2O7 is aptly named a "magnetoelastic spin liquid" and that the hybridization of the excitations suppresses both magnetic ordering and the structural distortion. The spin liquid phase of Tb2Ti2O7 can now be regarded as a Coulomb phase with propagating bosonic spin excitations.
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